The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 76

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76

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Negroes and Jews. We recently read that
there are half a dozen synagogs of Negroes, served
by colored Rabbis, in the Harlem district of New
York. If this is correct, it indicates strong prose-
lytizing by the Jews among the Negroes. The
paper in which we read the report asks: “Is the
Ku Klux Klan persecution driving the Negroes
into Judaism ?”

Contributions for Foreign Missions. — The Prot-
estants of North America contributed $5,690,999
last year for missions in India; for missions in
China, $9,862,000; for Japan, $3,264.000.

Native Turk Priest to Teach in Rome. — In the
Oriental Institute at Rome a Catholic priest, who
is a native Turk, is conducting a course on Moslem
doctrine and giving instruction as to the proper
approach to be made by Christian missionaries in
dealing with the followers of Islam.

Number of Jews. — The latest statistics report
the number of Jews in Europe as ‘11,474,668.
Of these, Poland has 4,100,000; the Ukraine,
3,330,000; Rumania, 1,000,000. In Asia there are
433,332, and of these only 85,000 are in Palestine.
Africa has. 359,722, of which number 177,500 are
found-in Tunis and Algiers. Of the 3,496,225
Jews in North America, 3,300,000 are living in
the United States. -A Jewish statistician gives the
total number of: Jews in the world as 15,783.947.
The’ niost numerous Jewish communities are New

York City, with 1,643,000; Warsaw, with 319,000;

and Vienna, with 300,000.

An Active Catholic Mission Society.— The Paris
Foreign Mission Society has its mission centers in
China, Tibet, and Japan. ‘All told, it is taking
care of over a million souls, of which 35,000 were
gathered last year. The work is being carried on
with the help. of 1,235 native priests, while 7,047
foreign workers are in the field. The society is
also supporting 5,594 mission-schools, which give
instruction to 221,885 children. Finally, 915 be-
' nevolent establishments, orphanages, hospitals, and

dispensaries, are conducted by this active mission-
ary agency.

Contributions of Northern Baptists. — The last
budget of this church-body that was brought to our
notice called for $9,429,109. Of this large amount
$1,308,310 was intended‘for foreign missions, and

$1,605,790 was asked to carry on the home mission

enterprises of the body. The Northern Baptists
number about 1,284,764 communicants and are
therefore about twice as large as the Missouri
"Synod.

Leadership. — Life anywhere depends to a large
degree upon light and leadership, and the best
leadership of a people is that which is raised up
among themselves. Outside leaders may start the
process of guiding, but the chief task of these out-
side leaders and pioneers is to train native leader-
ship, native leaders to guide their own people.
We must not tie the people among whom we are
doing mission-work, be they Negroes, Indians, Hin-
dus, or Chinese, to our apron-strings, but should
rather set them on the way of leading themselves.
We see how this is being done in our Negro Mis-
sions and in our mission enterprises in India and
China. And our success so far has been very en-
couraging and should urge us to carry on the task
of training native leadership with increasing zeal
and vigor.

A Witty Characterization. — A stranger in town
asked, “Mister, can ye tell me where the churches
of the town are located?” ‘The wag replied, “The
synagog is next to the- bank; the Episcopalian
church is over by the theater; the Presbyterian is
within two doors of the cold storage; the Baptist
is down by the river; the Methodist is next to the
gas plant.” The town must have been one of the
many thousands of our land where the Lutherans
had neglected to work! How would he have char-
acterized the Lutheran Church had there been one
in the town?

A University for the Dutch East Indies. — The
government of Holland plans to open a new uni-
versity at Weltevreden, Java, to meet the necessity.
of educating the millions of Indian people who
under its guardianship must learn how to govern
themselves as a step toward independence. ‘The
new university will be opened with six ordinary
and three or four special professors, to be nomi-
nated by the Indian government, with the excep-
tion of the rector magnificus, who will be appointed
by the Netherlands government. The first rector
magnificus is to be Dr. A. H. M. J. Van Kan, the
Leyden professor in Roman Law. The program for
the first year includes law, ethnology, sociology, and
Indian language. The object is to make the train-
ing equal to that in Holland. It is expected that
students will at first be mainly Europeans; the
university is, however, intended principally for the
inland population, among whom the pressure for
higher education has become very keen.

Protestant Missions in Japan. — Of all the Prot-
estant missionaries at work in Japan, 1,188 are said
to be located in the 81 Japanese cities that have

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